Monday, 6 May 2013

Jedling

I
thought Jed deserved his own post. At the end of March we went down to
Kernow, one of my favourite shows of the year. Jed has come on a lot
over the winter and so I decided Kernow would be a good first show for
him to do. The only thing is he is still very green and I haven’t been
able to train him as much as I’d hoped – in the last couple of months
he’s only had 1 training session a week… not really ideal for teaching
his contacts.

He
had a great time… only knocked 1 pole all weekend over 6 runs, which is
great considering when he was first learning to jump and had no idea of
how his legs worked he used to plough through jumps, breaking the
entire cup/wing on more than one occasion. He even managed a clear round
in G3 jumping and came 3rd.

He
absolutely LOVES running, but you can see from the videos he’s used to
only doing short sequences… in the 3-5 agility he did tunnel-jump
towards the score tent and then went ‘where’s my toy, where’s my toy’,
then I got him back and we carried on and did jump dogwalk, and then he
did ‘where’s my toy’ again. And in his G3 jumping he went through the
tunnel straight towards the startline ‘where’s my toyyyyy’ and bless him
had to slam on his breaks when he FINALLY realised I was calling him.
Anyone would think he was obsessed with his toy ;-)

Two
weeks later and another weekend of competing. He did a
total of 4 runs over the two days and had 3 clears! His first run was
1-3 agility, he was good but didn’t wait on his seesaw, he went on to do
the next jump and then realised he was meant to have stopped and came
running back pulled it back down and sat at the bottom bless him. Then
his next run was another 1-3 agility, he did a beautiful running DW and
AF, and a very good stop on his seesaw, and came 5thJ:-) then his next class was G3 jumping and I hadn’t walked the course, so he had a wide turn but still came 8th. The following day he just had one run, G1-3 jumping, and did another clear, and this time won it by over a second :-)
he is SO much fun to run, a massive big goofball but tries his heart
out to get it right. He’s still doing a few jumps goofily, but this is
settling down, and I know it’s just because he’s trying extra hard to
jump, rather than plough through, which is most appreciated ;-)